Summary
The Clarksville CVB wanted to upgrade their web presence, they wanted to allow visitors to see everything great about Clarksville, and even create an itinerary for their next visit on the site.
They needed to have a calendar of events, a listing of business and attractions, an itinerary builder, directories of staff, and legal documents. The full show so to speak!
Proposal
This project is a great example of failing and then winning. My first pass at the design was a literal failure. The client hated everything about it. They thought is was a beautifully rendered design, but that it was way way off the mark of what they wanted their site to become. We sat together, and we rediscovered what the client really wanted, I asked many more questions the second time through, and I was determined to knock it out of the park on the revision.
The revision was more or less a complete do-over. I only kept the general wireframe, but I redesigned every element, color and flourish.
I presented the new design to the Clarksville CVB team, and there was a moment of silence after I concluded, and I was afraid that I might have missed the mark again. But then they all started clapping. They loved the new direction, 100% no changes needed, let’s build it! That was the scariest moment of my career up to that point, but it also carried a big sigh of relief.
For the site build we used ExpressionEngine, and created a custom itinerary tool, calendar, and staff directory. We gave them the ability to edit and tweak every line of text and every image on the site without needing access to templates or HTML code.
Practice
For this project, I practiced UX Design (research, wireframes, and user journeys), UI Design, HTML/CSS/Javascript and ExpressionEngine CMS integration. Additionally I managed the project from discovery to launch.
